Hip-hip . . . hooray?

Tuesday morning was a weird run. The hip soreness seemed no better nor any worse than it was on Sunday and Monday, so I went out for the prescribed 5 miles, minus the strides. It was raining pretty hard, and had been coming down for close to 24 hours. I nonetheless chose a route on the trails through the woods. While it's always a refreshing change of pace to run in the woods, there were at least half a dozen flooded or mostly flooded points. I was wearing my Salomon XA Comp XCR's (right), which are extremely resistant to water coming in, meaning they are equally resistant to letting water out. That means I can't really run through puddles in them because they simply don't drain. I learned that lesson in a similar pair last summer during an epic running club tempo run workout in the midst of an unexpected summer thunderstorm. The sky blackened and the lightning struck within meters of us as we ran through the same trails near my house. 20+ of us gathered under a highway overpass (which bisects the woods, unfortunately) until the worst of the lightning had moved on.

So, the hips made their presence felt, and the conditions made me run the slowest recorded pace in my recent running life. Thanks to the times when I had to hike through the woods around the worst flooding, I think I averaged about 11 minutes per mile. My feet got wet, but not sloshy (I can stand wet, but hate sloshy), and I when I finished I was satisfied to have gotten the run out of the way before anyone at home was even awake.

Today called for 10 miles with 4x1200-meter intervals at 5K pace. Needless to say, no fast running today (or anytime soon, for that matter). I went out with my fast co-worker, Mr. 2:55 Philly, and my hips started to bother me almost immediately. He peeled off (after what must have felt like walking to him) at about mile 3.5, and plugged ahead (without a working Garmin, since the batteries died less than a mile in) until about the 5-mile mark. I was trying out my new CamelBak for the first time, and it was overly-bouncy at all. It was far more convenient to take a pull off the mouthpiece whenever I wanted than to deal with the FuelBelt bottles. I took a single CarbBoom gel at the half-way point, and stopped to stretch a couple of times. Since I had no Garmin (as my friend noted, "Better the Garmin, than your hips"), I'm not sure what my pace was, but I was able to finish the out and back run with a 1+minute negative split. Mapping it online, it looks like I went about 9.9 miles in 1:29, not a terrible effort in light of the state of the hips.

Tomorrow I see my massage therapist for what's sure to be a torturous hour. I'm hoping she has some magic in those strong hands which will help me get to (and then through) this weekend's 22-miler. Then I'll be able to relax, cut my distance, hopefully re-introduce some controlled intensity and taper my way to Burlington on May 25th.

-ESG